QUẢNG NINH — Nearly 50 businesses from the Fujian province of China and Việt Nam’s northeastern province of Quảng Ninh gathered at a seminar in Hạ Long City on Tuesday to seek investment and trade co-operation opportunities.

The Fujian enterprises are operating in the fields of industrial production, trade, finance, transport infrastructure, export-import, logistics, IT, high-tech and green energy. Meanwhile, firms from Quảng Ninh Province specialise in tourism, auxiliary materials, infrastructure construction and real estate.

Tạ Đức Quyết, director of the Mai Quyền Tourism One Member Company Limited, said that in the past decade, apart from tourism, his company had co-operated with several Chinese businesses in mining.

He expressed hope that through the seminar, Quảng Ninh would further simplify its administrative procedures to facilitate the operation of businesses.

Nguyễn Đức Tuyên, chairman of the Board of Directors of Đông Á Group, which specialises in metallurgy, said his group had partnered with foreign counterparts, including those from China, to improve the product quality.

The seminar created an opportunity for the participating enterprises to expand the market and seek co-operation opportunities in trade and investment, thus improving their competitiveness and ability for international integration.

On May 13, the two provinces signed an agreement on establishing friendship relation during the official visit of Vietnamese President Trần Đại Quang to China.

In 2016, the total import-export turnover between Fujian and Việt Nam reached US$3.14 billion, posting a 13.9 per cent year-on-year increase. In the first half of the year, the two-way export turnover was $1.77 billion, which was a 10.6 per cent increase from the same period last year, while the import turnover was $570 million, posting a 50.2 per cent year-on-year rise. — VNS